You are cordially invited to join American Atheists in Austin, Texas, for our National Convention and 50th anniversary celebration!

It has been an amazing fifty years since American Atheists started in Austin, with Madalyn Murray O’Hair. Now we are heading back to where it all began, for our fiftieth anniversary bash! This convention is going to be a blowout with three full days of speakers and events with TED-style plenary talks!

Come celebrate with us at the Hyatt Regency Austin (208 Barton Springs Road), just stumbling distance from downtown Austin. The hotel is also right next to the famous Bat Bridge!

The 2013 Convention will host 1,500 fellow atheists, plus vendors, speakers, comedians, entertainers, an art show and silent auction, and much more! There will be a fundraising dinner on Thursday night in the hotel restaurant overlooking Bat Bridge, so we will have the opportunity to watch the bats leave for their nightly hunting and then enjoy a great dinner to help raise money for American Atheists to initiate lawsuits and continue activism.

Camp Quest Texas is holding a "Mini Camp Quest" in conjunction with American Atheists National Convention. Children and teens ages 8-16 are eligible to attend this event. Teens ages 13-16 can help as "counselors-in-training" (CITs). Click here to complete the camper and CIT registration process. The registration fee is $75 for the entire weekend, or you can register and pay for each day separately ($30 per day).

Wish I could be there. Please keep us updated on everything that takes place, e.g., web sites, etc. Have a great time meeting fellow atheists, hearing thought provoking speakers and taking part in amazing conversations.

* A young man, from the top of the UT tower in Austin, in the late 1960s shot people on one of the city's main downtown streets. I was working a few blocks away.

* Voters elected Ric Perry governor.

* Better: UT students planted marijuana around the State Capitol building. They really did!

* Far better: a Texas citizens group is defeating the fundamentalists the governor appointed to the the state school board, and Texas public schools will continue to teach evolution.

* Far, far better: my wife, teaching fifth grade, taught comprehensive sex education. (Unhappily, when the fundamentalists that President Reagan invited into the Repub Party took over Texas, they replaced that program with abstinence-only sex ed and the teenage pregnancy rate went up.)

* So much better that it might actually have happened in another universe, my wife and I visited a nearby nudist camp.